The present invention relates to an inventory and anti-theft alarm system. In particular the present invention relates to an inventory and/or anti-theft alarm system that utilizes an RFID tag for providing an inventory and/or anti-theft control in either real time or at the time of a scan. The alarm tag includes an encoded unique RFID inlay and a RF transmitter and circuit that is applied to the merchandise to be inventoried. The unique RFID inlay is encoded with a unique “serial number” that is indigenous to a particular tag. As such, the particular encoded number is unique to any one particular tag and in this way the present invention can track each particular tag to its location in a premise.
A major problem in any inventory stocking environment is theft. The present invention provides a system and a method to avoid such theft using an inventory and anti-theft alarm system employing an RFID tag for maintaining an ongoing log or record of the number of times an RFID tag and transmitter has been locked e.g. applied to, or unlocked e.g. removed from an item of merchandise, and keeps track of the unique numbered sequence for that event. For example, if a tag is reused after the sale of merchandise, it would have an “add the tag”, “sell the item”, “remove the tag” and “apply to a new tag” status.
The number of logical sequences not being correct, indicates that something is amiss and that the tag may have been removed by a thief who stole the item after the last time that particular tag was applied. Otherwise the tag should be flagged for investigation by the store manager. Therefore it would be desirable to provide a method and system that can overcome these problems, and provide an alert so that if the tag was not opened or closed the appropriate number of times a possible theft or tampering of the tag took place.